Due to its special technological quality characteristics, durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum) is the most important raw material for pasta production worldwide. Durum wheat semolina contains a large amount of carotenoids (mainly lutein), which has little or no influence on pasta-manufacturing and cooking properties, but it leads to a considerable improvement in the aesthetic value, storability and marketability of pasta. Winter durum wheat is mainly cultivated in the Eastern Europe. The most important producers of this crop are the former Soviet States (mainly Russia and Ukraine) but winter durum is also sown in other Eastern and Central European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia) and in the Central Plateau of Turkey. The total production area of this crop is estimated at 1.2-1.5 million hectares, which is about 8-10% of the spring durum wheat area. Under Hungarian conditions durum wheat must be capable of surviving several days of temperatures as low as –20°C. Improving cold tolerance and technological quality simultaneously is no easy matter. The varieties used as sources of cold tolerance did not have satisfactory yellow pigment content. A target-oriented breeding program has been started in Martonvasar to improve the yellowness of the semolina. Minolta b* value (as an estimator of yellow pigment content) was measured in a set of 71 winter and facultative durum wheat varieties between 2012 and 2018. The mean Minolta b* value of genotypes from the 10 countries (Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Croatia, Turkey and Italy) varied within a wide range (17.02–26.93). The repeatability values exceeded 0.9 (h2=0.983), which proves the extremely strong genetic determination of this trait. A linkage map with DArT, microsatellite, RAPD and AFLP markers was generated using a biparental mapping population (PWD1216/MvTD10-98) of 182 recombinant inbred lines. The QTL analysis revealed the highest effect of loci located on the long arm of chromosome 7A (LOD = 7.07), moreover on 3B (LOD = 5.00) and 5B (LOD = 3.38) chromosomes on Minolta b* value. The technological quality of winter durum wheat genotypes has been significantly improved by the use of Minolta b* value measurement introduced in the mid-1990s. In recent years, the yellow pigment content of variety candidates and released varieties have been competitive with that of spring durum wheat varieties.

Acknowledgement. Presented research was financially supported by the GINOP-2.3.-15-2016-00029 project.